diff --git a/src/vectorcode/chunking.py b/src/vectorcode/chunking.py
index dbcd0a7e..906c68fb 100644
--- a/src/vectorcode/chunking.py
+++ b/src/vectorcode/chunking.py
@@ -141,6 +141,7 @@ def __init__(self, config: Optional[Config] = None):
         if config is None:
             config = Config()
         super().__init__(config)
+        self._fallback_chunker = StringChunker(config)
 
     def __chunk_node(
         self, node: Node, text_bytes: bytes
@@ -153,6 +154,12 @@ def __chunk_node(
         prev_node = None
         current_start = None
 
+        logger.debug("nbr children: %s", len(node.children))
+        # if node has no children we fallback to the string chunker
+        if len(node.children) == 0 and node.text:
+            logger.debug("No children, falling back to string chunker")
+            yield from self._fallback_chunker.chunk(node.text.decode())
+
         for child in node.children:
             child_bytes = text_bytes[child.start_byte : child.end_byte]
             child_text = child_bytes.decode()
@@ -307,7 +314,7 @@ def chunk(self, data: str) -> Generator[Chunk, None, None]:
             logger.debug(
                 "Unable to pick a suitable parser. Fall back to naive chunking"
             )
-            yield from StringChunker(self.config).chunk(content)
+            yield from self._fallback_chunker.chunk(content)
         else:
             pattern_str = self.__build_pattern(language=language)
             content_bytes = content.encode()
diff --git a/tests/test_chunking.py b/tests/test_chunking.py
index 094b7b02..d7d5bda2 100644
--- a/tests/test_chunking.py
+++ b/tests/test_chunking.py
@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
 import os
 import tempfile
+from unittest.mock import MagicMock
 
 import pytest
 from tree_sitter import Point
@@ -159,6 +160,24 @@ def bar():
     os.remove(test_file)
 
 
+def test_treesitter_chunker_fallback_on_long_node():
+    test_content = r"""
+def foo():
+    return "a very very very very very long string"
+    """
+    config = Config(chunk_size=15)
+    with (
+        tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile(
+            mode="w", delete=False, suffix=".py"
+        ) as temp_py_file,
+    ):
+        temp_py_file.write(test_content)
+    ts_chunker = TreeSitterChunker(config)
+    ts_chunker._fallback_chunker.chunk = MagicMock()
+    list(ts_chunker.chunk(temp_py_file.name))
+    ts_chunker._fallback_chunker.chunk.assert_called_once()
+
+
 def test_treesitter_chunker_python_encoding():
     """Test TreeSitterChunker with a sample file using tempfile."""
     chunker = TreeSitterChunker(Config(chunk_size=30, encoding="gbk"))